Collective Memory After Violent Conflict

Abstract

This chapter develops a framework for the analysis of collective memory in post-conflict settings. It is argued that so far collective memory is not sufficiently theorized within peace and conflict studies, even though in the aftermath of violent conflicts competing memories easily become subject to salient struggles that may even result in yet another outburst of violence. It is these competing representations of the past that researchers should more thoroughly concern themselves with and that they lack an appropriate heuristic device for. Focusing on processual and multidimensional concepts from the fashionable field of memory studies, the author proposes a new framework for analysis that offers categories and ideal-types for practice-oriented research. Based on poststructuralist discourse analysis, the framework allows to link discursive structures and patterns of identity, on the one hand, to actual agency on the other hand, thus facilitating effective interventions.